Building A Church Of Thessalonica For The 21st Century | Part 6 | True Evangelism | Dr. Madana Kumar Series

Building a Church of Thessalonica for the 21st century | Part 6 | True Evangelism

We are in Part 6 of the series on 1& 2 Thessalonians. We have looked into the historical background of forming the church at Thessalonica. We have established that the church at Thessalonica became a model church through their faith, hope and love. We saw that the Thessalonian church gives us several lessons on building a True Church. We have till now seen three pillars of what makes a true church namely True Transformation, True Ministry and True Fellowship.

Today we will study the fourth pillar of the True Church, namely True Evangelism.

Paul’s letters establish the fact that the Thessalonian church became a center of evangelism. They found ways to make sure that the surrounding areas heard about Jesus, and soon the entire area had heard about Jesus though what happened to these Thessalonian Christians. Paul confirms this in 1 Thessalonians 1:8 For from you the word of the Lord has sounded forth, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also in every place. Your faith toward God has gone out, so that we do not need to say anything.

The question that the Lord has placed on my heart to examine along with you is this. How did the Thessalonian church become a centre of evangelism? There were no seminaries dishing out degrees and PhDs in Missions and Evangelism. There were no books or theses written on the topic. There were no evangelistic retreats that we are aware of. There are no mission conferences mentioned in the epistles. There were no mission associations that were helping member organisations to strategise on evangelising. So where did they learn how to evangelise? The answer is simple. What they had is something greater. What they had is the personal example set by the very first evangelists. All that they learned about evangelism was based on how they were evangelised. How they accepted the Gospel. So, we are going to learn about true evangelism from the way the Thessalonian pagans were evangelised, resulting in the True Transformation that we studied in Part 3 of this series.

The study of these epistles reveal several aspects around the two focus areas of True Evangelism. The Mission Field and the Methods.

Let us look at the mission field that Paul conquered for the Lord. Let us look at the demographics of the region when Paul landed there. From the book of Acts, we can surmise that the population of Thessalonica was a mix of several religious and cultural ethnicities. There were Jews settled there. There were Greeks, Romans and people from various other ethnicities. Unconfirmed sources put the percentage of Jews around 10-25% at that time. So it is safe to assume that the majority of the population was Greco-Roman. Polytheism, idol worship, immorality, injustice and social injustice were prevalent in the culture. In part 1 of the series, we discussed that the geographical position of Thessalonica, right in the foothills of Mount Olympus, the abode of the Greek gods, had a great impact on the religious practices of the place.

It is to this culture that Paul bravely walks in. And he walks into this not from a place of great success. He walks into this hostile mission field, after having suffered at Philippi. Paul affirms this in 1 Thess 2:2 But even after we had suffered before and were spitefully treated at Philippi, as you know, we were bold in our God to speak to you the gospel of God in much conflict. We can get a taste of hostility of the Thessalonian Jews in Acts 17:5-9. The hostile Jews did not stop at persecuting Paul and team just in Thessalonica. They pursued Paul even to Berea when they heard that he was spreading the gospel in Berea. Acts 17:13 describes this pursuit. But when the Jews from Thessalonica learned that the word of God was preached by Paul at Berea, they came there also and stirred up the crowds.

In contrast to the Thessalonian situation, when Paul reaches Berea, he finds that the Bereans are a lot more receptive to the gospel. Acts 17:11-12 says These were more fair-minded than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so. 12 Therefore many of them believed, and also not a few of the Greeks, prominent women as well as men. The formation of the Berean church was a lot more easier than the formation of the Thessalonian Church. You can also see the similarity of the composition of the Berean church to the Thessalonian church. Luke uses almost the same words when he talks about he Thessalonian church in Acts 17:4 And some of them were persuaded; and a great multitude of the devout Greeks, and not a few of the leading women, joined Paul and Silas. Luke uses the term “many” when he describes the transformation at Berea, and he uses the term “multitude” when he describes the transformed group at Thessalonica. I mean no disrespect to the Berean believers, but it is a fact that it is not the Berean church that Paul applauds for “the word of the Lord sounded forth” and reaching all part of Macedonia and other places. It is the Church at Thessalonica that gets that recognition.